Mirrors II

 There are those who look in the mirror and remember what kind of man they are. Those are the ones who end up taking steps to peel off the layers that still reek of the world, clean up the smudges, and wash the stains. Then there are those who look in the mirror and forget what kind of man they are as soon as they see their reflection. Whether they see themselves as good enough or passable or compare themselves to others they deem more unclean, those who do not acknowledge their sin will never do anything to be free of it. The genesis of repentance is recognizing you have something to repent of.

One must acknowledge one’s state in order to be comfortable with looking in the mirror, and that would mean accepting where one is and that nobody drove them to that particular point; their choices walked them to it ever so slowly.

The first step in any transformational endeavor is to accept responsibility for where you are and that you are not without fault for being there. McDonald’s didn’t make anybody fat; people eating it in bulk quantities without regard for the caloric count or nonexistent nutritional value perpetrated their ever-expanding girth on themselves. It’s not as though a pimply-faced kid in a McDonald’s uniform would show up at your door with a bag of greasy fries and six cheeseburgers if you failed to drive yourself to one of their locations and wait in the drive-through with all the other gastronomy snobs.

The mirror is the mirror. It’s how you react when standing in front of the mirror that matters. We’ve all done the sideways suck-in-your-gut mirror check or taken two steps back, thinking perhaps we would look thinner and more streamlined. Then again, maybe it’s just me. Even so, everything we did to create an optical illusion was just that because deep down, we knew that we never had washboard abs, no matter how much we wanted the mirror to reflect it.

How honest you are when approaching the mirror and how you react to the reflection you see sets you apart and determines whether you will take steps to correct what the mirror shows needs fixing or ignore it and continue about your life as though nothing were amiss.

2 Corinthians 3:18, “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.”

What are you hoping to see when you look in the mirror? Someone thinner, younger, with more hair and a chiseled jawline? The ideal is to reflect Jesus. That is what you should hope to see when you look in the mirror of the Word. Sounds easy, but like most things, just because it sounds easy doesn’t make it so. The concept itself is simple, and some people confuse simple with easy, but dying to flesh and putting the will of God before your own is a battle. It is, nevertheless, a battle you must win. It’s a process, and if you see more of Jesus and less of you every day you look in the mirror, you’re headed in the right direction.

Your heart’s desire must always be for more of Him and less of you. That’s a heady prospect to some because they begin to fear losing themselves, their identity, and who they are if they surrender so much of the flesh. Such individuals are always resisting the transformative power of the presence of Christ, not realizing that the point of it all is for the flesh to die so that Christ may live in them.

People want God but on their own terms. They want only so much of Him when it’s convenient for them and when their schedule doesn’t conflict with anything else. They don’t want all of Him because all of Him would presuppose that they are no longer their own, and all they desire is for the will of God to be done in their lives. If you’ve ever wondered why we see so little of the manifest power of God in today’s church, it’s because the level of commitment required to experience the manifest power of God just isn’t there.

God is not some college student hard on his luck who is forced to have roommates. He doesn’t want to share your heart with another, and whenever men insist that He should, His answer is always no. God wants you for Himself. Until you’re ready to be wholly His, you will not walk in the authority rightly yours as a son or daughter of God.

In His love, God may facilitate an encounter with the mirror, but He can’t force you to change what you see in it unless you desire to do so. No, you can’t do it on your own. The stains are old, long-dried, and deep-set. The rags your flesh deems as royal robes are torn and filthy, stinking of rot and bad choices, and only the blood of Jesus can cleanse them, but you must want to be made clean.

If you’ve ever seen a video of someone trying to give a dog or a cat a bath, you have a pretty good idea of how some people react to being cleansed of their old ways. In His mercy, God tries and tries, but eventually, if the clay hardens and resists, the potter will just go on to a new lump of clay. He loves you; He’s proven it by sending Jesus, but if you consistently trample the Son of God underfoot and count the blood of the covenant as a common thing, you are treading on dangerous ground.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.